Diksha Sundriyal
Netflix’s ‘Outer Banks’ builds a compelling world in the fictional Kildare County of North Carolina. The focus is on a group of teenagers known as the Pogues, who, every season, find themselves embroiled in the search for a treasure. Their journeys in the first three seasons culminate in the finale of season 3, but that doesn’t mean their treasure-seeking days are over. Their fame attracts the attention of some very rich and powerful people, one of whom seeks out the Pogues to look for the items in the treasure of the pirate Blackbeard. The rich man in question, Wes Genrette, lives in a dilapidated mansion called Blackstone on Goat Island. Interestingly, the house and the island are fabrications of the show.
The Fictional Blackstone and Goat Island Become Significant Plot Points in Season 4
The title of ‘Outer Banks’ references a real location which serves as the backdrop of the story, but the show itself takes place in a fictional place in North Carolina. While the show has referenced several real-life places, most frequently Charleston, over the course of its multiple seasons, the town that the Pogues call home remains entirely made up. The same holds true for Blackstone and Goat Island as well. Though there is a real place called Goat Island in South Carolina, it does not seem to have any connection to the island referenced in the Netflix series. The real-life Goat Island is close to Charleston and is accessible only by boat. It is also described to be surrounded by miles of undeveloped salt marsh. The Goat Island in ‘Outer Banks’ is somewhat different from it.
While the events of ‘Outer Banks’ are supposed to take place on an island off the coast of North Carolina, the majority of the show is filmed in Charleston, South Carolina. In the fourth season, the show extended its production to Wilmington, still, a lot of the fourth season was filmed in and around Charleston. The scenes featuring Blackstone and Goat Island have been lensed in and around the South Carolina city, with the waterside scenes mainly filmed around Shem Creek. Blackstone is introduced at the end of Episode 1 in the fourth season when the Pogues visit Wes Genrette for the first time. Blackstone is his family home and is known to have been around for 200 years. While several places in Kildare are known to have been centuries old, only Blackstone shows such signs of dilapidation that it makes the Pogues wonder how the structure is still standing.
While this is the first time we see or hear of Blackstone, Goat Island has been around for much longer in the show. It was prominent in the second season of the series when the Pogues were on the search for the Cross of Santo Domingo. From the angel tree to the swamp to the church of Denmark Tanny, all of these sites are supposed to be located on Goat Island. For the filming of these locations, the crew stuck mainly with Charleston to give it a veneer of Kildare.
Read More: Outer Banks: Is JJ Related to the Genrettes? Who are His Parents?
